Traveling, whether business related or pleasure, is part of today's lifestyle. Most of the traveling is associated with a particular event, such as a conference in another state, a cruise or a tour of a geographical area. Although these events attract a lot of people, there are no available means for people to get to know each other prior to, during and after the event without being physically introduced to each other. For example, if a person is interested in attending a conference, but has no means of transportation and would like to carpool to the conference, this individual has no means available to him to identify other individuals who are planning to attend the conference and who reside in the same area as the first individual. Or a person decided to attend a certain set of lectures at an event and wishes to communicate with someone who attended a different set of lectures after the event.
In addition, attendees of an event may want to know who else is attending the event and shares interests, professional or social, with them. For example, a person taking a cruise who has a passion for a game of chess may want to be able to contact another traveler who is going to take the same cruise and who also plays chess. Or, a person who likes to drink beer at dinner and play chess after dinner may want to be able to contact someone who likes to play chess and has nothing against drinking beer at dinner. As stated earlier, there are no means available currently on the market to allow people with similar interests to contact each other prior to, during or after an event in which they are participating.
Typical Internet systems that profile users attempt to offer personalized choices to achieve matches of users to their preferences, however these systems lack ability to determine which user preferences apply to particular situations. For example, while in New York a user may indicate that he likes to go to Broadway plays in the evening and would enjoy a companion, however the same user may not have any interest in seeing a play during an event In Los Angeles, but would be interested in going to the beach during the day. Typical Internet systems are not able to distinguish between user preferences for events In New York and events In Los Angeles.
What is needed, therefore, is a solution that overcomes these and other shortcomings of the prior art.